Birthday Suits
by SMKLegacy
Summary: On a slow night in the lab, “Dear Abby” sparks a conversation in the break room. . .


**Birthday Suits**

TEASER: On a slow night in the lab, "Dear Abby" sparks a conversation in the break room. . .

DISCLAIMER: Last time I checked, the evidence was stacked against me in my claim to own even a single stock option in the many partners who make up the CSI franchise. Therefore, I plead guilty to the charge of having fun with the crew and promise to have them back in time for the next night shift to start. Neither do I own "Dear Abby" – that belongs to Jeanne Phillips, who isn't quite the Abigail Van Buren her mother was (IMHO).

RATING: PG-13 for sexual content

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Dribble drabble sparked by a slow night in my lonely bedroom with my local newspaper – companion pieces in "The West Wing" and "JAG" sections, as well.

Warrick snorted and chucked a section of the _Las Vegas Chronicle_ at the table across the break room.

"What caused that?" Sara eyed her teammate and waved at the paper, a corner of which had landed in her blueberry yogurt.

"'Dear Abby'," he said.

"Really?" Her eyebrow went up.

"Really."

"Really what?" Nick loped in from the hall, pulled a chair out from the table, turned it around, and straddled it, leaning his arms on the back and his chin on his arms. He smiled at Sara.

Sara picked up the paper and wiped dripping purple goop off before it could land in her lap. "Apparently, Warrick is offended by 'Dear Abby.'"

Nick laughed. "Puh-leese. Anyone who takes that drivel seriously needs a life."

Warrick pushed himself off the lounge chair and joined Sara and Nick at the table. "How do you sleep?"

"What?" Nick's head spun so fast toward Warrick that it bounced back the other way before he could gain control and focus on the other man.

"How do you sleep? It's a pretty simple question."

"Not well and not much," Sara answered, and put a spoonful of her yogurt in her mouth.

Nick nodded; everyone knew about Sara's insomnia to one degree or another. "In the day time."

Sara spewed purple tinted snot across the table at Nick's obvious answer.

"Classy, Sidle, classy," Nick taunted.

"Geg me nafkim!"

"What?" Nick asked.

At the same time Warrick started, "Sara –"

"Geg me nafkim!"

"Get the lady a napkin, gentlemen," Grissom said from the doorway.

The two men scrambled to help Sara, each wondering how much Grissom had heard.

Only when Sara had cleaned herself up and the table off and had settled again at the table did their supervisor come in, trailing Catherine behind him. No one, except perhaps Sara herself, was surprised when Grissom sat down in the chair closest to her. Nor were they all that surprised when his arm found its way across the back of her chair.

Grissom's steel flint eyes sparked when he looked around the table, leveling his glare at last on Nick's baby-faced smile. "So, tell me, Nick, what happens in the daytime that causes Sara to do something so unladylike as to spit her yogurt through her nose?"

Nick looked at Warrick, who just shrugged. He looked at Sara and quickly decided that it hadn't been a smart move, as her eyes might as well have been lasers set on "kill". The only safe place to look seemed to be Catherine, who had missed everything thus far.

"I sleep."

Sara rolled her eyes. "That's not an answer to the question Warrick asked."

"Sure it is. He asked, 'How do you sleep?' and I said, 'In the daytime.'"

Catherine spoke before Grissom could. "I think Warrick's question was qualitative, not temporal."

"Precisely, which is why I said, 'Not well and not much.'" Sara sat back against her chair and Grissom's arm.

No one would have admitted to her that they saw her fleeting smile as contact was made. And they certainly never would have said anything to Grissom about the way his body relaxed toward hers and the way his hand found its way around to cradle her in his arm without being obvious about it. They all valued their jobs too much.

"Actually, I was referring to your sleeping apparel." Warrick reached behind him for the coffee pot and a stack of Styrofoam cups.

Nick's lips twitched. "What does this have to do with 'Dear Abby'?"

"The column today was all these responses to a mother who wrote in wondering if what her 14-year old daughter slept in would affect her development." He set out five cups and poured coffee into each as the conversation continued.

Grissom raised his eyebrow at Warrick. "Unless the girl was wearing something that might cause her to choke herself in her sleep, I can't see what difference any kind of night clothing would make in a teen's development."

"That's what I think, too, but mom was concerned about her sleeping naked being a sign of some kind of sexual dysfunction. Some of the letters were just . . . too much information. But my question remains, how do you sleep?"

Before anyone could answer, Greg slid into the room, headphones clamped around his head. The lyrics to the R. Kelly song blasting from the mini speakers would have been unintelligible had he not been singing along. He reached across the table to take two cups of the coffee Warrick had poured as he crooned, "'Baby tonight I wanna see you naked. Oh babe, oh babe, yo' body's the reason for sight' . . . Um . . .uh, hi. What did I miss?"

Afterward, everyone else would claim to have been the first to shout, "Get a pen!"

_-- FIN –_


End file.
